Everest: Shortlisted for the 2025 Jhalak Prose Prize

Ashani Lewis

'Funny and astute, Lewis has a keen eye for both the echoing loneliness and transcendent moments of connection in our increasingly atomised lives.' Marie Claire

What happens when you reach Everest's peak? Is it everything you dreamed?

In a magnetic follow-up to Winter Animals, Ashani Lewis' debut collection takes a kaleidoscopic approach to desire - its obsessions, its grotesque demands and the distance it creates between us - and the strange things we stubbornly, hopefully, desperately expect from our lives.

A dying woman dedicates her life to Antarctic ice; an All-American star longs for a romance that defies convention - to the detriment of his carefully curated reputation; a woman seeking her exes' opinions on a breast augmentation takes us on a whirlwind tour of the complicated, intertwined lives of urbanites; a singer prepares for her film debut, pushing her humanity to its limits at an unusual acting school; a newlywed couple put their marriage to the ultimate test: Everest. In these twenty-one striking stories, Lewis creates a stark world of fleeting infatuations, violent compulsions, unexpected solace and the sombre ghost of memories.

Praise for WINTER ANIMALS:
'Thoughtful, intelligent and beautifully written . . . Lewis is definitely a new talent to watch' Marie Claire
'A dreamlike, piercing examination of privilege, youth and freedom' Cecile Pin
'Lewis is superbly talented' Katherine Rundell
'A remarkable novel: atmospheric as hell, beautiful and delightfully intelligent' Jenny Mustard
'A glittering, dark-edged tale . . . Exhilarating and fabulous, I raced through it' Priscilla Morris
'A debut full of ideas. I have the sense that this is the first of many new worlds' Telegraph